


HOPE FULFILLED

by Knightsbridge07



Category: Black Panther - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), infinity war - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 05:29:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15599331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Knightsbridge07/pseuds/Knightsbridge07
Summary: Following events of Winter Soldier, Civil War, Black Panther, and Infinity War, James "Bucky" Barnes recalls the events that led him to this point, as he and a 23-year-old Shuri recite their wedding vows, which are interspersed throughout the story. The dead have returned from the "snap," and the two have decided to take the plunge.





	HOPE FULFILLED

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wakandawinterprincess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wakandawinterprincess/gifts), [lilithenaltum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithenaltum/gifts), [Jedi_Queen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jedi_Queen/gifts), [MissFit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissFit/gifts), [Malaiikka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malaiikka/gifts).



> I'm new to MARVEL fanfiction and to this ship. This is my first attempt, and so I hope I've done justice to this pairing.
> 
> Feel free to comment.

 

He stood barefoot by the lakeside, the fading sun disappearing unhurriedly below the orange and lilac horizon. The first star of the evening had appeared somewhere in the western sky along with a few bands of dark blue. A breeze blew across the lake, ruffling the tall grass at the water’s edge and the few dark tendrils of hair that hung loose from his messy bun. The dragonflies, waning light shining on their translucent wings, rose and dipped on the lake’s surface, leaving tiny ripples. Butterflies of every color fluttered among the equally colorful blooms, and his little goats bleated softly as they shuffled about in their pen.

 

He barely heard her footsteps as she sauntered outside his cabin...theirs now. He didn’t look away from the scene as she sidled up to him and laced her delicate fingers in his fleshy hand. She leaned her head against his upper arm as he turned slightly to place a soft kiss on her forehead. They both took in deep breaths and released.

 

He’d finally given himself to this happiness and satisfaction, ultimately accepted that he might indeed be worthy of it.

 

He felt the squeezing of his hand and smiled. He turned to her fully, framed her face in his hands, and kissed her nose then lips, lingering there a while. She drew him into her embrace, and he pressed her close to his chest. His blue eyes gazed into her brown ones, and he kissed her once, twice, three times. Around them night fell, bringing with it the low rumble of frogs and crickets chirping. The creatures of the day were beginning to tuck themselves into their sanctuaries, as the nocturnal beasts were preparing to emerge.

 

Another glance toward the scenery, then he walked with her back into the cabin.

 

**###**

 

James Buchanan Barnes—Bucky in a long-ago existence—had lived a life that only story books could have fathomed. The first time he died, he had fallen from a moving train into an icy ravine. He was left with the final image of an anguished friend who was desperate to save him but couldn’t. And so, James laid there in the freezing cold, broken and bleeding, waiting for some peaceful dream to see him off into eternity.

 

That dream never came. Instead, strange men had snatched his now singular hand from the door of the afterlife and carried him away to a worse fate.

 

He had been resurrected unto death and made to serve cruel masters.

 

They took him apart piece by piece—body, mind, soul, tissues, cells, neurons—and remade him into their instrument of destruction. They drained him of his generosity, love, and compassion and pumped him full of their greed, hatred, and malice. They doused the gentle fire in his eyes and replaced it with a frigid glare. They gave him cold machinery in place of bone, blood, and flesh. He was given life—captured in eternal youth—in order to deal death. They made him super powerful, invulnerable, and nigh unstoppable…inhuman.

His strength was used to prey upon the weak. He was silenced so that he could strike without warning. He could no longer stroll leisurely, only march toward the goal of subjugation.   

 

HYDRA took and took and took from him—his voice, memories, hopes, dreams—and left him with nothing. They’d eliminated his freedom to choose. When he would have peace, they demanded war. When he hoped to heal, they dealt infinite pain. Rather than make him whole, they shattered him again and again. Rather than free him, he was kept bound.

 

But James’ increasingly unfathomable story took a fateful turn.

 

HYDRA had sent him to kill an idea, one whose time is ever-present. Steve Rogers was his mission, and James had failed. Steve had won by laying down his arms, refusing to fight a friend.

 

Whatever moved him to pull a bloodied and beaten Captain America from the Potomac and leave him at the riverside, he didn’t know. From there, he slipped into the shadows one final time, or so he thought. The last vestiges of HYDRA rained down on Washington, D.C., as the three helicarriers blasted each other out of the sky with laser cannons.

 

**###**

 

The Wakandan king and many others had been killed in a fiery explosion at a United Nations gathering. His dutiful son, the prince, wept intensely over his father. The world said that James, HYDRA’s Winter Soldier, did it. Was it not his face the cameras caught? His dark hair?

 

He knew he hadn’t done it. He did the only other thing he understood—he ran. The young man who had come to Vienna a prince was now a king chasing him through the streets.

 

Steve Rogers gave it all for him. He would help James prove his innocence, even at the cost of everything Steve himself held dear. He thought bitterly that once again, here he was, destroying the good, breaking what was whole. He just wasn’t worth all this. The entire thing felt so wrong—Vienna, Leipzig…

 

Siberia.

 

Even underneath the cowl, he could tell that Steve had turned whiter than his usual self. Watching the video, James felt removed from his body. He saw a man on a motorcycle chase a car down a dark road and force it to crash. A distinguished gray-haired man crawled from the wreckage and was punched twice in the face with a metallic hand. He was carefully placed back behind the wheel. On the passenger side, that same hand strangled the disoriented blonde with almost no effort, her pained last word, _Howard_.

 

Steve knew.

 

All else became a red and blue blur, he and Steve against a grief-possessed Iron Man. Even as the two of them tossed the shield back and forth battering him, some part of James’ psyche screamed, pleaded for it stop. Could they not understand how the man had been wronged? Did the Winter Soldier _not_ deserve to be incinerated by a laser blast?

 

Even as Steve helped carry him to safety, his metal arm in shreds, James felt for Iron Man. The Winter Soldier had taken the Starks from their only son Anthony in Christmas of 1991, and now he was taking Steve from him. James looked back at the unmasked Tony Stark and shuddered. He couldn’t help but think that he’d torn out something more significant than the arc reactor, was certain that Steve Rogers had given up more than a mere shield.

 

 

**###**

 

James found mercy—undeservedly so, he thought—from the new king of Wakanda, T’Challa. He wasn’t sure if he could believe his ears. There was a way HYDRA’s programming could be undone, a way that his mind could finally be healed. It sounded like he was dreaming, could be that’s why his hearing had suddenly felt fuzzy, not because the Siberian wind was pounding them all harder than Iron Man had. T’Challa bid them to come.

 

The man who masterminded all this, the king would see to it he was delivered to the proper authorities. James didn’t even have the strength to be angry.

 

As T’Challa’s jet rose above the dull grayness of Siberia, James wondered if Steve saw the red and gold suit crawl out the entryway of the abandoned base. He was silent as Steve rested his head in his trembling hands, his breathing ragged and labored.

 

 

**###**

 

James feared his mind might betray him, felt like he was standing outside himself as he said it. He sat on an exam table in a laboratory arrayed with super advanced technology _and_ snazzy décor—a far cry from HYDRA’s drab, unholy torture chamber. Around them, Wakandan scientists prepared machinery and formulas, manipulated holographic displays, wrote down information. Some took communications from beaded bracelets around their wrists.

 

When they had touched down in Wakanda, James was…something he couldn’t quite explain. He slackened his pace to capture the greenery and flowers, the animals, the gaily-bedecked people with their beautiful hair (or lack thereof), their rich skin, and colorful textiles. The place was warm, fertile… _alive_ …a harmonious middle ground between a proud and splendid past and a bright, optimistic future.

 

He and Steve had drawn a few curious glances from staff as they made their way through the palace. There were no others like them in the country. From some of the talk he picked up now and again, there had never been…until now.

 

As he and Steve talked, T’Challa came up to them with a fashionable young woman following him. She couldn’t be more than 18 or 20, if that. Her intricate braids crowned the top of her head while a mass of them fell down her back. T’Challa said that she was his sister…she would help unwind the tangled mess in his head.

_Great_ , James thought as he short-circuited the impulse to roll his eyes, _a real live princess_. _Maybe that chatty kid with the spider webs wants to get another shot at me._

 

James didn’t voice his doubts. He said nothing of how he snorted inwardly at the idea that this Shuri could possibly fix him. She _had_ to have better things to do—young person things, princess-related things, _anything_. When she spoke to him, though, she was quite serious and knowledgeable. His skepticism diminished just a bit.

 

That was the first time she touched his hand.

 

The sense of comfort was instantaneous, as powerful as it was tender.

 

He’d be safe.

 

He and Steve talked a few more minutes before they put him under. James asked his friend how he was feeling, if he was okay. He lied and said he was just fine. He decided not to press the issue, didn’t mention that he’d seen Steve packaging up a letter to New York and what looked to be some prehistoric communication device, at least prehistoric by this century’s standards. At any rate, James hoped that whatever was in that letter would heal the breach between his friend and Tony Stark.

 

The cryo-chamber’s hissing indicated its closing. As the frost claimed him, he thought to himself that this was the first meaningful decision he’d been able to make for himself in ages.

 

 _My choice_ , the words traveled along the jumbled webs of his mind like electricity. No needles, no torture, no random words to activate the mindless killer that HYDRA had created all those years ago.

_My choice_.

 

James went once again into cold darkness, only now with the hope that he would find light when he awakened.

 

 _My choice_.

 

**###**

 

There wasn’t much pageantry when they were finally married. After what they’d been through—after the horror the entire universe had endured—they saw no need for wedding extravagance. T’Challa gave James a simple white linen ensemble with silver tribal accents. Shuri wore a billowy sundress arrayed similarly to the groom’s outfit. A tattoo artist adorned her hands and feet with intricate henna designs.

 

The bride and groom held hands and touched foreheads, wept with solemn joy as a council elder presided over the ceremony. They spoke their hearts before the small audience of family and friends.

 

 _*My life I will build with you in love,_ _a strong foundation that never fails_ , they vowed.*

 

 

**###**

 

James couldn’t gauge how long he and the countless others had been gone. All he remembered from that day was a furious battle. He thought with intense frustration that he’d had scarcely any time to enjoy the sanity Shuri had given him or the country that now sheltered him. Every available warrior gathered against certain doom—all the tribes, King T’Challa and the Dora Milaje. There was his lifelong friend Steve and his own motley crew—Natasha, one whom James had made in his own image in another life, his curmudgeonly pal Sam, Dr. Banner, a jittery brunette fellow in a gigantic red suit of armor that he could barely control, and another armored man, one like himself who had served the American military. He, too, was named James. He also was supported by mechanical limbs. Wanda, a redhead with expressive eyes and powers none of them could imagine, had been desperate to protect the man she loved, Vision.

 

 _Yibambe!_ the Wakandans chanted.

 

They determined to hold fast.

 

_*I will hold you close, cover you, and keep you safe,_ they vowed. _*_

 

**###**

 

Unearthly lightning fractured the sky above them, and a valiant figure wielding an axe landed amid the chaos with a shock blast, destroying many of the aliens. He charged at the intergalactic tyrant with storms blazing from his eyes. He required vengeance for the brother and the people who were taken from him. The young man’s pain, it seemed, might turn the tide in their favor.

 

If only…

 

When he felt himself fading away into dust, he called out to Steve. Everything was being taken from him again. His last thoughts at that moment hit him like a wave. Did T’Challa know how thankful he was for his kindness? The children who visited his cabin and playfully called him White Wolf, he prayed they were spared. He wanted Tony Stark to know that he was sorry about Siberia and about his parents, to tell Steve to reach out to him first.

 

He wanted to fix all that he’d broken, and now he’d never have the chance.

 

The sentient raccoon, he figured, would likely claim his new vibranium arm if _he_ didn’t also turn to ash.

His vanishing face shed its final tear for Shuri.

 

_*My heart will never leave you_ , she said and placed her hand on his chest.*

 

**###**

 

 _*When I go far, your light will guide me home_ , he said.*

 

The scientists had told him the dead were gone a little less than three years. Tony Stark brought them all back, with the help of Banner and several other scientists worldwide…one of whom was Shuri.

 

The Shuri that he and T’Challa returned to was no longer a lighthearted princess. She was a queen—the Black Panther. She had taken up the mantle and the duties that came with it with a strength neither of them ever envisioned she had. Her physical scars alone were a testament to that. Maybe they foolishly believed she would never need to tap into that well. It was a remarkable feat for someone all of 23 to lead and protect a nation, carry on diplomacy, and help a team of scientists essentially raise billions of dead.

 

 

 _*No matter the obstacles, I will always return to you_ , James said as she wiped his eyes with a now calloused thumb.*

 

**###**

James didn’t know much of what was happening in the world outside Wakanda’s borders. In the few months since the dead’s return, he’d only gotten little drabbles of information from Steve and Natasha. He’d actively avoided any media and spent most of his time in Shuri’s company or alone at his cabin.

 

When he awoke in Shuri’s lab—sans his vibranium arm—she was standing over him. He nearly knocked her down when he launched himself into her embrace. They cried in each other’s arms, then he gathered himself just enough to inquire after T’Challa and Sam and Steve.

 

She herself had just come from seeing her brother. She left him with their mother Ramonda, Okoye and Nakia. Steve, James Rhodes, and Natasha were with Sam.

 

After getting all the updates he could think of at that moment, he asked Shuri to marry him. She accepted without pause, then spent hours resting her head on his chest. James ran his fingers over her now close-cropped hair, feeling the shape of her head.

 

Apparently, everyone had reappeared right where they had fallen. He and T’Challa and Sam and the other Wakandans wandered the landscape at first like zombies. They were all rounded up and taken in for medical evaluation and questioning.

 

Questions about what they’d experienced…wherever they’d all been.

 

James told Shuri later when they were alone that it was like a desert. He didn’t see anyone else, so he assumed everyone had been contained in a place where they, too, were alone. There was no concept of time, and he had no idea what was happening anywhere else. Calling her name was the only thing that held him together.

_*You, my love, are sacred. I happily lay my heart in your gentle hands,_ they vow. _*_

**###**

 

Over a family dinner with Ramonda, Nakia, Okoye, and himself, Shuri returned rule of the nation to her brother—formalities would be seen to later. She told him she’d remain available to guide him concerning changes made in his absence. T’Challa’s playful punch to her shoulder said so much, re-established their fun-loving sibling bond, signified that he’d always be her protector. It also showed how deeply proud of her he was.

 

She playfully flipped him off, causing everyone at the table to laugh.

 

James smirked slightly when she wiped a bit of food from his chin with her napkin and kissed him.

 

 

Later that night, he and T’Challa stood on the back balcony of the main palace. Below them, Ramonda and Shuri and Nakia strolled the garden pathway hand in hand. There simply were not three more women in the world more suited to be queens. They’d each proven their mettle in any number of ways.

 

James was curious about what his experience in the void had been, but he didn’t think T’Challa wanted to broach the subject.

 

Everyone would hammer out their feelings in their own time.

 

Instead…

 

“I know you will treat her well,” T’Challa says, looking down on the three most important women in his life…both their lives. “It’s obvious you love her. Anything else is really of no concern.”

 

They talked more, their conversation accented with lengthy pauses. The corner of T’Challa’s mouth lifted with a kindly smirk. He raised his hand seeking a handshake. He sent James off with a hug and the traditional Wakanda greeting of arms crossing over the chest—as he would do only with Shuri.

 

“Thank you.”

 

“Well…you are family now, so…”

 

 

**###**

 

_I take you as my wife for always, choosing you with open eyes and a clear mind. To you only, Shuri, do I give myself in marriage. This is my vow to you now and forever._

_I take you as my husband for always, choosing you with open eyes and a clear mind. To you only, James, do I give myself in marriage. This is my vow to you now and forever._

 

They exchanged the vibranium rings blessed by the elder. He’d barely finished the sentence when they slotted their lips together to make their husband-wife bond official.

 

**###**

 

Shuri asked him if he wanted children right away.

 

 _Yes_ , James answered immediately, _as many as you’re willing to have. I’m not opposed to having our own little tribe_.

 

They laid facing each other on the bed in their cabin the day after their wedding. He stroked his hand up and down the soft skin of her back, reveling in the goosebumps the cool morning breeze raised on her body.

 

She tittered at his statement, burying her face briefly in her pillow. _Then you have much work ahead of you, James._

 

He shuffled closer to her and kissed her mouth once again, only now, she seemed to stiffen. James drew back in concern.

 

_Is everything okay, love? What’s wrong?_

 

Shuri bit her bottom lip and looked him in the eyes with great hesitancy. Her voice shook slightly with unshed tears.

 

He touched her shoulder. _Please, you can tell me._

 

_I was so afraid I’d fail, James, so scared that I’d fail you, my brother, and everyone I love. The thought of never seeing you again…I-I just—_

His heart sank into his stomach, and he pulled his wife into his arms. He pressed her close, kissed her teary eyes.

_You listen to me, woman, and listen good. You. Did. NOT. Fail. I’m here, T’Challa’s here, we’re all alive. If it weren’t for you, that wouldn’t be the case._

 

 _I—_ she squeaked.

 

 _No!_   James hissed with resolute eyes. _My faith in you is what kept me alive, kept me tethered to this world. I never stopped believing in you, Shuri, because you are the smartest, most determined and stubborn lady I know. That’s one of the million things I love about you, you never give up. You brought me back, you did that. And all that while leading a country and defending it from enemies. You know what a mess I was when I first came to Wakanda. HYDRA snatched my entire life right out of my hands and turned me into a monster. I wouldn’t have survived all the things I was dealing with if it weren’t for you. You made me human again._

She laugh-sobbed as he held her face in his hands. _Thank you, my love. Thank you._

_I said it in my vows, remember? No matter the obstacles, I will always return to you. And I mean it, Shuri, every word._

James kissed her forehead and rested against it. Her eyes, her beautiful brown eyes that held all the stars, were once again bright and calm.

 

 _I know you do, James_. She kissed his lips once, twice. _Now, I believe you said something about us having a tribe_.

 

 _Right_. He reached around her to pick his wrap up from the floor, then crawled over her to get up from their bed. _That’s why we gotta have some food. We’ll need our strength_.

 

James took her hands and hoisted her up from the bed and watched as she pulled on the white linen tunic he’d worn at their wedding.

 

In the kitchen, she sat at the table while he prepared her a big breakfast and hummed a jazzy tune.


End file.
